


Broken Like Boughs of Holly

by metaphasia



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 01:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/pseuds/metaphasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of how Felicity found herself in the mall, in an elf costume, that, much like the Grinch's heart, was two sizes too small. (Luckily, Isabel wasn't around, or she'd have a few pointed comments about her skirt's length.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Like Boughs of Holly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kansas42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kansas42/gifts).



Felicity threw the wipe in the garbage with a grimace. There was still vomit on her shoe, despite scrubbing at it for five minutes. She looked up into the mirror and sighed at her reflection; red dress, complete with white fur trim, and matching Santa hat. She commented under her breath, "Worst. Mission. Ever."  
"At least your costume was meant to be worn by people," Diggle said, through the comm hidden in her ear, "If anyone gets to complain about this mission, it's me."  
There was a very good, logical reason, that they were all dressed up in the most tacky Christmas costumes imaginable, volunteering at the mall (the mall, of all places, Felicity swore she was over these terrible jobs when she finally graduated from college - and she would have been done with these minimum wage soul consuming jobs sooner, but she did it without debt - but then she just had to fall in with a crime fighting vigilante billionaire), in Santa's Workshop.  
It was all Oliver's fault.  
So technically, it might have been Felicity that uncovered the connection between the fraud ring and the volunteer Santa's around the city, collecting under the guise of the reconstruction effort, but it was Oliver who decided that the best way to investigate was for them all to volunteer as well. Not, as Felicity had suggested, electronic surveillance. Apparently, billionaires doing charity work at Christmas to reconstruct the city was the sort of good publicity that helped offset the fact that your family was the reason the city needed reconstructing in the first place.

Felicity made her way back out to the Workshop, as she, for once in her life, managed to restrain herself from rambling about how, not only was her costume just as bad as John's, but that this wasn't even her stupid holiday. She was Jewish.  
She did not, however, manage to restrain herself from giggling when she caught sight of John, dressed in his reindeer outfit, complete with red makeup on his nose and jangly bells hanging from the antlers attached to his headband.

Oliver's outfit was a mirror of her own elf costume, green where hers was red. The irony of the fact that he was still wearing a green hood despite not being dressed as the Arrow was not lost on her, although Oliver didn't seem to have noticed. At least, he didn't acknowledge it, which, with Oliver, didn't necessarily mean that he wasn't aware of it. She took her place at the exit again, handing out candy canes to the children as they left the court. Luckily, she only had to pay attention to what she was doing for a few seconds at a time, which gave her plenty of time to look around for anyone who was acting suspiciously. And also to stare at Oliver, welcoming the kids in. Really, it was unfair how his costume seemed to just accentuate his biceps even more than normal, where she just felt awkward in hers.  
"You're staring," Oliver breathed in her ear through her comm.  
Well, he was good at not showing that he noticed things.  
"No I wasn't. I was surveilling the area in the general vicinity of the entrance. Checking for suspicious activity. Giving the whole area a once over. You just happened to look over when I was looking in your general direction."  
As if to support her statement, and to prove John's snickering wrong, she looked around the room in the least circumspect manner possible.  
And then she gasped, because she saw their target standing near the back of the room.  
"Guys. Not to be an alarmist, but I'm pretty sure I see our man, at the back of the room. Next to the tree."  
Both Oliver and John glanced over, and then quickly began moving towards the tree, as fast as they could disentangle themselves from the children around them. Oliver was able to hand over the entrance duties to one of the other volunteers faster than John could get clear of the photo booth, but must have been spotted, since the guy they were pursuing began to take off when Oliver was only halfway there. He cursed under his breath and began walking even faster, but when he got to the Christmas tree, he stopped suddenly.  
"Oh, no," Felicity said. She could clearly make out that his hands were clenching, hard enough to leave his knuckles white.  
"John, I think something triggered him," she said.  
John looked up quickly, and it was his turn to curse under his breath. "Get him out of here; I'll chase after our guy."

Felicity quickly glanced around the break room, checking that it was clear of any other people, as she pulled Oliver in through the door. She led him over to the couch, where she let him sit down, and back away to the other side of the room. This wasn't the first time Oliver had had a flashback in front of her; apparently, spending all your time sparring in a poorly-lit and maintained basement may have been an effective form of therapy for dealing with anger issues, but was not as great when it was a trigger for traumatic experiences. She busied herself with wetting a paper towel, as she listened to his breathing gradually slow down. Oliver was a dangerous person at the best of times; when he was not thinking straight, it was best to get him away from other people, to give him space to cool down. When she thought he was reasonably back under control, she approached him again, slowly, and offered him the wet towel; after a minute, he reached up for it, with a grateful look on his face.  
"Thanks," he said.  
"Of course, Oliver. Look, I know you don't like to talk about the island a lot, but you haven't had any incidents like that lately, and it looked like a bad one this time, so if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but if you do, I'm willing to listen."  
Felicity finally managed to get her rambling under control by worrying her lip instead of her words, and waited for Oliver to say something.  
Finally, he spoke. "My family used to have the most extravagant Christmas parties before. My dad would go to every extreme to decorate the house. Wreaths on every door. Lights on every wall. And a tree in every room. The whole house smelled of pine trees for weeks afterward.  
"But there were pine trees on the island too. And they ... were not associated with happy memories there. I didn't even consider it; we had a party last year, when I got back from the island, and I didn't have any trouble then. But I guess the trees from the party were older, or I didn't get close enough to smell them. Because I got one whiff, and I was right back on the island."  
"Oliver," she started, but trailed off, as she didn't know what exactly to say. She looked around the room, helplessly, before her eyes settled on a miniature tree by the door. She walked over, and broke a small piece of a branch off as she spoke. "We'll work through it. You don't have to go it alone; I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere, and I'll help you through all of it, not just this, but anything else that comes up. Me and John, both of us, will. But for now, maybe this will help you remember the good times, rather than the - the island."  
She handed him the pine branch, let him start to smell it, before she pulled him in for a hug, and kissed him on the cheek.  
It wouldn't solve all his problems, but if it solved this one, Felicity might start believing in Christmas miracles.


End file.
